Friday, April 23, 2010

So this Saturday, Art City Austin goes down, and these knit-tagged street signs are a little taste of the public art you'll see decorating downtown. Magda Sayeg, who created the knit sleeves above, is one of Art City Austin's commissioned artists.

To me, Magda epitomizes the type of art that Austin does best: handmade craft, with a semi-guerilla spirit. Austin Craft Mafia, the lingering spirit of the Enchanted Forest, etc.

What I'm trying to say is - in the words of C+C Music Factory - it's "the things that make you go hmm."

As part of Magda's artist commission this year, she will also cover parking bollards along Cesar Chavez near Austin City Hall with lovingly knit sleeves. Which I might STEAL! (Just kidding. I won't steal.)

The second commissioned artist for Art City is Daniel Morrison, an architecture student at UT. Using discarded cardboard boxes, Morrison and a team of volunteers will create roughly 20,000 unique pieces of what he refers to as “a very large puzzle,” titled Cardboard Sky.

Once finished, the cardboard swath will be suspended in the air in the plaza of Austin’s City Hall. It will look kind of like this!:

In addition to these two offbeat public installations, there will be a whole slew of artists at the Art City Festival happening on Cesar Chavez. Check out the full line-up here.

Magda Sayeg photos above by Johnny Walker. Yes. That is his real name.

7 comments:

Such an improvement! When the original installation went up years ago I wasn't exactly bowled over. When I saw this yesterday while I was cruising down Lamar my face lit up and I thought - FINALLY! I also saw there was some new knitting on the light post outside of DOMY - you gotta check it.